Chapter Text
Vex really should be asleep.
It would be a good night for sleep, honestly. Her neighbors next door aren’t arguing for once and the elderly woman above isn’t blasting her television at full volume. It’s warm for January, and a nighttime storm has blown through Emon with rain instead of snow. It pitter-patters softly on her bedroom window, the sound itself nearly drowned out by the snoring of the dog curled up on her bed. The bed in question is freshly made and just asking to be slept in properly.
There’s really no reason for Vex not to sleep, and she really should, but here’s the thing: Vex has never really been that great at doing what she’s supposed to.
So while the waiting warmth of her bed sits unused, she sits cross-legged in her computer chair across the room trying to will her game to put her into an actual match.
After an aggravating wait, the game finally places her into one and she unfolds her legs and sits up in her chair. She lets her team pick their characters first, filling in where she’s needed-- they balance out nicely for once, and she can happily pick a DPS character without feeling guilty.
The enemy team lets them take the first stretch and move slowly back into the area that’s easier for the other team to defend than right outside their spawn, and Vex takes a couple of potshots at the distant, bobbing heads as they round the corner.
A red line streaks across her screen, killing her instantly.
“What the fuck,” she says under her breath, her character’s corpse falling limply just behind her teammates. Where did she even get shot from?
When her killcam comes up, she leans forward in her seat. The enemy sniper has themselves perched almost completely out of sight from where she was killed, partially because they’re so high up and partially because they’re practically across the map.
What a good omen for the start of a new game, huh?
She starts to leave spawn but ends up lingering to wait for the rest of her team; the enemy sniper getting an early pick on her and a few others gives the other team the upper hand and allows them to wipe her team quickly.
The second time she gets picked off with a headshot, she almost yells. She doesn’t, though, because she imagines that the last thing her neighbors in the apartments next to them want is to be waken up at two in the morning by her getting a little too worked up over a video game. More importantly, Vax has to get up for work in a couple of hours and she really isn’t a fan of the idea of waking him up.
For a moment as she watches the sniper’s point of view, she wonders if it’s an aimbot. It’s not unheard of to run into them every once in awhile, after all, but the aim is missing the mechanical snap to it. The shot that kills her is aimed with an almost graceful fluidity before flick; down she goes. No, this sniper is definitely being played by a human. One with infuriatingly quick reflexes and good positioning, but a human nonetheless.
Vex finds her tempo after that, tuning into the game in the way she only does when she’s getting agitated. She’s having a good run, picking off key targets in the enemy team as they continue to push forward towards the final point, before she jumps to climb on top of a box for a better viewpoint and is hit with a body shot. She frantically moves her mouse to search for her sniper, erratically moving her character back and forth with her WASD keys to try to avoid another shot until her fingers feel like they’re going to cramp up and break off. They’re perched on top of a roof, close enough where her bullets won’t have damage falloff. She aims and shoots, landing a bodyshot before they finish her off with a clean headshot.
ELIMINATED BY DEYOLO flashes across the bottom of her screen in white letters for the third time as her character falls over dead.
“Alright, buddy,” Vex murmurs as she sits back in her chair, cracking her knuckles in that way Vax hates as she stretches her fingers. Once again, the replay of her death shows her that the enemy sniper is obnoxiously accurate but not inhumanly so. After a glance at her team’s composition, she switches to a sniper character before she respawns. “Two can play at this game.”
She spots them almost immediately after she rejoins her skirmishing team, the other sniper perched up at the end up the point, scoped in while trying to take down the DPS. They don’t even see her, and she can’t help but grin to herself as she lines up the shot and takes it, landing a clean headshot that kills them instantly.
“Revenge is sweet,” she murmurs softly aloud to herself, allowing for a moment of pride and, admittedly, a bit of pettiness.
They manage to move right up to the objective on their last push, the game ticking over into overtime. She tries to pick the DPS off before they can close in, but their respawns are staggered out enough to keep it alive, and along with their spawn advantage they manage to hold long enough to send in an ult that wipes the rest of her team. With a long sigh, she jumps onto the objective despite knowing it’s useless. To make things worse, she’s taken out by the enemy sniper as they emerge from their spawn room.
“Fuck,” she says under her breath as DEFEAT appears on her screen.
She takes a long drink of water before she types out a quick GG, then bites her lip before she continues.
bearoness: nice sniping
DEYOLO: thank you
DEYOLO: nice sniping from you at the end too
bearoness: i try my best :^)
When the next game loads and they’re both still in it, although still on opposite sides, she can’t pinpoint if she’s excited or annoyed. On one hand, she’d love to win something and, although she considers herself a pretty excellent sniper, she’s easily being outdone by this other guy. On the other hand, Vex loves a good challenge and whoever this person is, they’re a damn good one.
She finds her groove after her second kill, picking off an enemy flanker before they’re able to take out her team’s support. When she spots the other sniper, she manages to take them out with a clean headshot before they even manage to pinpoint where she is, one that’s quick enough to feel a little bit smug over. She’s rewarded with another pop-up in the chat.
DEYOLO: nice shot
She considers taking a second to type back but quickly finds herself distracted by an enemy taking down one of her teammates.
Her and the other sniper continue to trade picks for the rest of the game, and at one point they get her with a trick shot that she sees in her killcam that even she has to admit is pretty cool. She types back a quick compliment, and even though they’re still alive they take the time to pause and type back a thank you. If she’s being honest with herself, about halfway through she starts to develop a bit of tunnel vision when it comes to the other sniper. A side effect of being a twin, really; competitiveness is something she’s quite familiar with.
They skirmish around each other for the next two games-- and she can’t be totally sure, but she suspects the other sniper developed tunnel vision with her too, as they stopped making quite as many picks on the rest of her team, instead seeming to focus on trading blows with her. After the fourth game ends, she’s practically buzzing with energy; more energy than she’s felt in weeks. This other person, whoever they are, is a challenge who seems all too willing to play around with her a bit, and she could really use all the fun and enjoyment she can get her hands on right now.
When the game boots her to the main menu instead of another match with that group, she practically deflates in her chair as she feels the stab of disappointment. Well, so much for that.
Vex bites down on her lip as she draws her legs up to her chest and rests her chin on top of her knees, watching as the main menu loads. Her chat from the game is still visible on the left, including the name of the enemy sniper. After a moment of hesitation, she clicks on their name and sets the chat to whisper.
bearoness: hey, i just wanted to say that was some rlly great sniping on your part one more time
A couple of seconds pass and she thinks that she’s about to get ignored, but sure enough a message pops up.
DEYOLO: Thank you
DEYOLO: You landed some good shots yourself
bearoness: haha ty
bearoness: i cant do any fancy trick shots like you tho
DEYOLO: I’ve had a lot of practice
DEYOLO: Even without the trick shots, you were still fun to play against
bearoness: yeah?
DEYOLO: It was genuinely some of the most exciting snipe-offs I’ve had in this game in a long while
She reaches up and takes her bottom lip between her forefinger and thumb and pulls slightly, a nervous habit.
Well, fuck it. Why not? The worst that happens is her request gets declined and she feels a bit like an overeager idiot for a little while before shrugging it off. She takes her mouse in hand again and clicks on the ‘send friend request’ button.
Much like before, there’s a long moment where she thinks they’re just going to ignore her. Then the game makes a little alert sound as it informs her that one of her friends is online; specifically, this person.
She can’t help a little burst of delight.
bearoness: we should group up some time
DEYOLO: That sounds fun
bearoness: it does! i hope playing on the same side as you is as interesting as playing against you
DEYOLO: I would hope so?
bearoness: maybe you can teach me some of those trick shots haha
DEYOLO: If you wanted, I could certainly try!
bearoness: idk what else you play besides snipers but i’ll gladly trade trick shot knowledge for tips on how to play my main heroes
DEYOLO: I mostly play DPS heroes, especially hitscan
DEYOLO: And that sounds fair, but you really don’t have to
bearoness: oh cool!
bearoness: and nah it's fine fair is fair u know
bearoness: i play a little of everything but i like characters with mobility
DEYOLO: Good to know ha
DEYOLO: Unfortunately I can’t really stay on any longer. I have work in the morning and I’ve pushed my night long enough
bearoness: oh yikes yeah i get you
bearoness: i probably should’ve gone to bed a while ago too
DEYOLO: Well, it was nice meeting you
bearoness: yeah! talk to you later
DEYOLO: Good night
bearoness: gn!
Vex watches as the game gives her a notification that her new friend has logged off before taking her headphones off and setting them down so they rest against her keyboard. With a sigh, she leans back in her chair and stretches herself out with a yawn.
Well, that’s interesting. They’re a bit stiff typing-wise compared to her, but then again she’s used to frantically typing conversations in a large group chat. She threw formality in her online writing out the window years ago.
She considers going for a couple more games since she isn’t all that tired, but the clock in the corner of her screen makes her feel guilty about even being awake. Four in the morning is bad even for her. It’s definitely not the first time she’s stayed up gaming this early, and she knows it won’t be her last, but it leaves her feeling gross and irresponsible. At least if she was just laying in bed pretending to try to fall asleep for this long, she wouldn’t feel as awful about being awake. Plus Vax’s alarm will be going off soon, and she really doesn’t want him to peek in on her and find her still at her computer.
She logs out of her game for the night-- morning, night, whatever, she shouldn’t be awake is the point-- and briefly hovers her cursor above the icon for Chrome, biting down on her lip. She really should check her email. She’s not helpful to Vax when she’s like this, not pulling her own weight in helping keep their apartment. It’s just… it’s exhausting opening it and finding nobody interested in her.
And fuck it, she really isn’t interested in ruining what was a pretty decent day right before she passes out. So she shuts her computer down and takes another swig of water before getting up and pushing her computer chair in. She strips out of her sweatpants and kicks them off to the side of the room, vaguely in the direction of her dirty clothes basket, before she practically faceplants into her bed. The brown behemoth of a dog sleeping curled up at the foot of it huffs at the sudden disturbance but doesn’t otherwise move.
Vex turns her head to the side and watches Trinket sleep, a small smile spreading across her face as she prepares herself for another night-- er, morning-- of restless sleep. “I sure am jealous of you, buddy.”
She wakes to red hair and golden eyes and a splattering of freckles staring down at her.
Keyleth jumps back from Vex’s bed with a yelp as she sits straight up in bed suddenly, nearly headbutting her poor friend. “Sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”
“What the fuck, Keyleth,” Vex says as she squints at the other woman now bashfully avoiding her eyes-- the woman who is still very much standing in the middle of her bedroom. “Why are you here? It’s only--” She glances at her clock for the time and nearly bites down on her tongue when she sees that it’s two in the afternoon. Well, that’s a good part of her day gone. The unhealthy sleep cycle continues. “Why are you here, Keyleth?”
“Vax said I should come see you,” Keyleth says, and Vex can’t help but start plotting out her brother’s murder. Luckily for him, he works at a funeral home so hopefully they’ll get some sweet discounts. “And I have that spare key you guys gave me so I let myself in.”
She holds the key in question up and Vex sighs. Back when both twins were often gone at the same time because of work, Keyleth came over to dogsit Trinket. Lately Vex hasn’t needed that service.
Vex pushes the covers so they lay bunched at the foot of the bed, disturbing the dog in question who snorts before stirring, his head lazily rising to look at Keyleth and huffing a soft greeting to her. Vex shivers as the cold air hits her bare legs, raising an arm so she can make grabby hands at Keyleth who just stares at her in confusion. “Pants, if you would be so kind.”
“Oh!” Keyleth turns to the dresser next to her and opens one of the drawers, pulling out a pair of worn leggings and handing them to Vex. “Here you go.”
“Thank you darling.” Vex does her best to wiggle into them, getting to her feet so she can pull them on in what she’s sure is the most unflattering way. Now with pants, she turns back to Keyleth and the problem at hand. Warily, she asks, “Why did Vax say you should come?”
“He said you’ve been down in the dumps since you got fired from your last job,” Keyleth starts, and Vex feels her shoulders droop. Of course. “He thought you could use a friend. Somebody to pull you out of the house and give you a dose of positivity.”
“Well,” she says with a sigh, reaching down to give Trinket ear scritches. “You are the right person for that, I suppose.”
“It was me or Pike. And Pike is on shift at the hospital right now,” Keyleth says apologetically.
Vex shakes her head. “No, no. You’re fine company.” Then she bites her lip. “You say you want to get me out of the house?”
“How about coffee?” Keyleth suggests, her eyes suddenly twinkling knowingly as Vex feels a sharp tug of need in her stomach at the very mention of coffee.
“I mean, if you insist.” Vex looks down at herself now, frowning. “I should probably shower before we go.”
The smile Keyleth flashes her is warm enough to melt snow. “Of course!”
Forty-five minutes later, Vex is sitting across from Keyleth in a booth table at a local cafe, cradling her scalding hot coffee in her hands as she waits to drink it.
She lets Keyleth chatter away while she absently taps her nails against her coffee cup and gazes out the window of the cafe and into the dull brown winter of Emon. A light dusting of snow covers the city streets, parts of it watered down from the rainstorm last night and now frozen over, the white turning into a slick gray-brown mush in the road. Winter is, frankly, ugly in the city. Vex carries fond memories of running through pristine snow with her brother when they were young and lived with their mother out in their small rural hometown (a ‘backwater hick town’ she once heard it called in their private high school after they were whisked away to live with their father).
“So do you think he’ll help me?” Keyleth asks, breaking through her daze. Vex flicks her eyes back to meet the redhead’s eager ones, immediately feeling guilty for ignoring her after Keyleth was kind enough to drag her out of her hidey-hole and even buy her coffee.
“I’m sorry, darling,” she says apologetically, bringing her coffee up to her lips for another sip before continuing. “I kind of zoned out there for a little bit. What were you asking?”
Luckily for Vex, Keyleth seems completely undeterred by her impoliteness. “Oh, I was just asking if you think Grog would be willing to help me work out. Like, teach me some of his moves and stuff so I can get fit.”
Vex quirks an eyebrow and rests her chin in her hand, eyeing her friend over. “I mean, I don’t know Keyleth. I bet he’d absolutely help you if you asked, but are you sure Grog would be the best person for you? I mean… his workouts are pretty extreme from what I can tell.”
“Oh, I know,” Keyleth responds brightly, and Vex can’t help but admire her enthusiasm at the very least. Grog goes to the gym regularly, his social media absolutely covered in pictures and videos of him lifting weights and doing his workouts. It’s honestly pretty fucking insane how strong the guy is, and the videos are… well, the twins are both incredibly weak people in a number of ways and Vex would be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy watching Grog’s videos-- and Vax isn’t innocent either.
Really, they made such a mistake collecting so many attractive people as their friends.
“Well, if you’re really sure about it, I’m sure he’d love to help you.” The big man really does have a heart of gold buried under all those muscles, especially when it comes to his squishy friends.
Keyleth flashes her another smile before taking another sip of her coffee and humming. “I asked Kash for advice and he told me--” Her face scrunches up and she raises her finger and begins to do what Vex can only imagine is her best/worst impression of the man in question. “Babe, I love you but we are not going to be one of those couples that workout together.”
“You asked Kash?” she repeats, an eyebrow raised.
“He’s deceptively strong!” the redhead responds brightly. Vex’s eyebrow raises even higher, if possible. She wouldn't have pegged Kash for being strong, but hey, she also has never seen under the seemingly endless layers he wears and Keyleth has, so if she’s telling her that Kash is fucking ripped under all that then she'll take her word for it.
“How is Kashew?” Vex prompts at the mention of the doctor.
“Kashaw,” Keyleth corrects.
“Bless you,” Vex shoots back.
The redhead ignores her. “He’s good! He’s been working a lot of night shifts so he’s been really tired lately. We haven’t gotten a chance to really Skype or do stuff as much because of it, but it’s fine.” She pauses, and Vex watches a content smile slowly spread across her face. “We’re fine.”
Keyleth has been seeing Kash for about a year now and Vex can’t help but find the whole thing a little intriguing. They met when Keyleth went out of town to work on some rich old woman’s yard-- as a freelancer her landscaping usually only gets business locally, but she’ll occasionally get recommended by previous customers and get to drive out to other cities-- and ended up falling somehow and hitting her head. After driving herself to the local hospital-- which is the part of the story where everybody in the group proceeded to lose their goddamn minds-- she not only got the news that she suffered a mild concussion, but also somehow managed to nab the number of one of the doctors there.
(“He was leaving after his shift when he saw me and bought me chips from the vending machine!” Keyleth said at one point, staring dreamily off into space.
“How romantic,” Scanlan had quipped dryly, making Vex cover her face to muffle the snort she made.)
Vex has met him only a handful of times and, honestly, he's a bit of a prick. To his credit, she did get the impression that it’s less him trying to be awful and rude and more that he’s just perpetually awkward and more than a little confused-- and incredibly frustrated by that-- at all times.
Vex had asked him for his number at the end of the lunch where Keyleth first introduced him before she parted ways with the two lovebirds, if only for the sake of politeness and because she felt it was right to get to know her friend’s boyfriend.
Kash had simply responded with “I don’t have a phone,” while he visibly fiddled with the one he was holding in his hand.
So, no. Vex is not on particularly close terms with Keyleth’s boyfriend.
“That’s nice,” Vex says honestly. Despite her odd dynamic with Kashaw, she was glad that he somehow made Keyleth happy anyways.
Keyleth shoots her the most lovely smile, and then suddenly her eyes go wide and she snaps her fingers like she’s just remembered something, a soft O forming on her pink lips.
“Oh, I nearly forgot; I have this for you,” Keyleth says, rustling around in her little green purse before pulling out a purple laminated card and holding it out to her. Vex blinks down at it, and Keyleth waves it harder in front of her, prompting Vex to slowly take it from her.
She purses her lips once she realizes what it is. “Keyleth, why are you giving me a business card?”
“It’s from this really nice animal salon downtown,” she explains excitedly. “I was doing some talks with the owner about doing some work for her yard and she mentioned that she runs it.” She gestures at the card. “I looked it up online and when everything checked out, I went in person to scope the place out and it’s really nice, Vex. So I asked for a business card for my friend who’s job hunting and really, really passionate about animals.” Keyleth does her best wink at her, which isn’t very good-- her other eye almost closes with it too, and, well, she’s Keyleth so it’s still a bit endearing. “That’s you.”
“Yes,” Vex says slowly, turning the card over in her hands. “I know. Why did you get this for me, though?”
It feels a bit like… well, it feels a bit like pity, and Vex has never enjoyed being pitiful.
“Because you’re my friend, and you’re in a rough place, so I’m going to try to help you claw your way out.”
Well, it’s not… quite pity. It still makes her stomach churn accepting help, knowing she’s enough of a mess to need help in the first place, but she slowly slides the card into her jacket and mumbles out a half-hearted, “Thank you.”
Keyleth manages to shift the conversation towards her work shortly after, so luckily Vex’s thoughts don’t get to linger on pity for too long. After they finish their coffee they just walk and talk through the city for another hour, their adventure coming to an end after they reach the exit of the park by Vex’s apartment building. She sees Keyleth off with a wave and a promise that she’ll see about that business card before slowly trudging her way back home.
She’s pleasantly surprised to hear the tap running in the kitchen as she comes in the front door and tugs her boots off on the mat, brushing stray pieces of hair out of her eyes as she adjusts to the warmth of the apartment. “Vax?”
“No, it’s a burglar,” her brother deadpans. He stops washing dishes to turn and look at her as she slowly makes her way into the room, an eyebrow raised.
“And what a kind burglar you are, washing all our dishes.”
Vax reaches over for a mug sitting off to the side and takes a long swig from it, eyeing her until she gets closer before he reaches out to grab her around the waist and pull her in for a noogie. She bats at him half-heartedly, rarely opposed to affection from her often emotionally-constipated brother.
“How was your day?” she asks after she wiggles out of his grasp, snatching his coffee mug from his hands and making him grunt in protest.
“Long,” he says, yanking his coffee back after she takes a sip and taking a long drink from it. “So fucking long.”
“It’s a living,” she points out, and he gives a shrug.
“How was yours?” Vax asks casually, tapping his fingers on the mug and looking down into the liquid with tired eyes. “You do anything fun? Leave the house?”
She feels an irrational bit of anger flare up at the reminder of Vax telling Keyleth to come check on her-- it did her good, really, but it doesn’t make her feel any less guilty or awful about letting this funk get her so down that her brother has to call in one of their friends to check on her-- and bites it down. “Fine. Keyleth came over, but you already knew that.”
“I hope you aren’t mad,” he says, eyes flickering up to look at her again. “I was just worried.”
“I’m not mad,” Vex responds instantly, smothering the little part of her that is, in fact, mad.
“Vex,” he warns, a frown on his face. “Don’t lie to me about that.”
“I was a little annoyed,” she relents, crossing her arms defensively. “But I understand why you did it. And it was good. I needed it.”
“Good,” he says, clearly relaxing. “What did you two do?”
“Got coffee, took a walk through the park before splitting ways and heading home.” She shrugs.
Vax takes a step back from her, an offended look on his face as he cradles his mug close to his chest. “You had coffee already and you’re stealing mine?”
“Yes,” she shoots back instantly, taking a step closer to him and pawing at it because she’s a little shit.
“I have been awake since four thirty, Vex,” he says, his voice dripping with over-dramatic syrup, “and you decide you’re still going to deprive me of my precious?”
“Oh, shut up,” she scoffs good-naturedly. “You’ll be going to sleep in like an hour or two anyways. Don’t you know it’s bad to drink coffee before bed?”
“Hypocrite,” he accuses.
“Absolutely,” she agrees.
She banters with her brother in the kitchen for a while, enjoying the familiar company before he smiles softly and tells her he’s going to watch TV for a bit and wind down from work, and she leaves him be-- but not without a stolen smooch to the forehead-- and retreats to her room, plopping down in her rickety old computer chair and leaning back as she waits for her PC to boot up.
She opens her email and feels her mood drop instantly. No replies about interviews, no emails that anybody is interested in her; nothing. Vex lets out a shuddering sigh and drops her forehead directly into the keyboard, the keys mashed uncomfortably against her face. Lovely. Fucking lovely.
She pulls that card Keyleth gave her out of her jacket pocket and holds it in her lap, looking down at the cheesy purple background and bright yellow pawprints acting as a border to the contact information.
Well, fuck it. What does she have to lose at this point?
The website for the salon looks like it hasn’t been updated in ten years to her-- the color scheme nearly obnoxious and the layout of the website itself reminiscent of the websites her younger self had browsed-- but at least it’s navigable and, according to the latest notice on the front page, still in-use by the owners. She tries her best to ignore the uncomfortable weight in the pit of her stomach as she works her way through applications, trying and (mostly) succeeding, at least to the point where she successfully sends her stuff in instead of closing out of everything related to it.
Vex spends the next couple of days playing her game a lot and trying to bury the sick feeling that only continues to grow stronger when she doesn’t get any replies, as she always does when she’s hit a particularly rough patch of depression, but she doesn’t end up playing it alone for the most part.
Her new friend-- DEYOLO, although even just saying the name in her head makes her giggle, so she decides to just stick with ‘her new friend’-- is actually the one to approach her about playing first. They whisper to her almost as soon as she boots up the game after closing her email to ask her if she wants to try grouping together, and her day can really only go up from the shitty depths she’s plunged her mood into, so she agrees, desperate for any sort of pick-me-up.
They are, in fact, as interesting to play with as they are to play against. They start out playing a sniper for a few rounds, then switches off to play DPS. She switches around a bit, leaving the sniping to them.
They have a good couple of games before they have to politely excuse themselves for the night, and Vex reluctantly takes that as her cue and goes to bed too.
They play on and off for the new few days, sometimes only for a handful of games and sometimes for hours on end. It’s nice. They don’t actually talk much outside of absently calling shots in the chat or lightly bantering while waiting to get put in a game, but she doesn’t feel pressure to keep up conversation. It’s comfortable.
On the fourth day of playing together, they run into an awful streak of bad luck. They lose six games in a row, and no matter the character shifts they make, they just can’t pull off any wins.
Vex has her head in her hands when the current match ends, barely suppressing a frustrated scream. She drags her fingers across her face as she watches the stat cards come up and, predictably, her friend has one for eliminations. She throws them a vote in appreciation because, hey, even if they got totally stomped, her friend at least did pretty well. As she watches her EXP bar fill up a downright miserable amount, a message pops up in the corner of the screen.
DEYOLO: We’re kind of getting destroyed, aren’t we?
She snorts. No shit.
bearoness: that's putting it lightly, i think
DEYOLO: It definitely is.
bearoness: you had a good kill streak for a while there
bearoness: despite our team as a whole failing miserably lol
DEYOLO: Thanks lmao
DEYOLO: You got a couple nice kills too
bearoness: take what we can get
DEYOLO: Too true
She leans back in her chair and stretches her hands as the loading screen for the next match starts and-- ah, great. The same teams again. Lovely. She locks in on her character and takes a deep breath.
DEYOLO: Hey
bearoness: ?
DEYOLO: What do you think about voice chat?
Well. Uh.
Vex has a lot of thoughts about voice chat in video games. Most of them not good. She’s had some rather awful experiences using it in the past when she gamed, usually tied into her being a woman, and has heard some downright nasty things directed at her.
It’s not as if she’s naturally a shy person-- quite the opposite, really-- but she likes being comfortable and voice chat runs the risk of being the exact opposite of comfortable for her.
Before she has a chance to start replying, her friend sends another message.
DEYOLO: We’re getting our asses kicked so maybe we can organize better if we’re actually calling shots and stuff at a moment’s notice.
DEYOLO: No pressure though
She bites down on her lip (Vax’s voice teasing her that she’ll gnaw right through it one day echoing in her head-- because god, she sure has been doing it a lot lately) before she types back.
bearoness: would group chat be okay with just us?
bearoness: not a fan of general team chat
DEYOLO: Of course.
She has to go into her settings and flip on her mic and group chat volume in-game because she can’t actually recall a time she’s ever used it. There’s a good chance she just disabled those settings when she first got the game because she didn’t want to deal with creepy internet randoms. When she plays with Vax or Keyleth or any of her other real friends, she just uses their Discord server for voice chat.
Vex watches the game give her a little pop-up that tells her that there are two people currently in the group voice chat, and she takes a deep breath.
“Hello?” she says into the mic, more than a little timidly. She hopes her friend can’t hear the way her voice slightly wavers on that one word.
Silence. After it goes on moment too long she considers dropping out of voice chat and flipping all these settings off immediately, but then another voice emits from her headphones.
“Hello?” the voice echoes back, masculine and rich and so, so fucking posh. It’s about the last thing she expected her sniping buddy to sound like, which is why she jolts in her seat when she hears them speak.
“Uh, hi,” she offers lamely.
“Oh, good. It works. This should be much easier now.” He breezes past the fact that she has a feminine voice, and she can’t help but feel the wave of relief that washes over her. She’d much rather it be a non-issue than even get a single remark about it, so she’s grateful for this pleasant development.
“Yeah, uh, I hope so.” She runs her tongue over her lips again. “Hey, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to give me a name? I suppose I can call you DEYOLO if you don’t wanna give me one--” She’s cut off by an audible groan from the person on the other end.
“God, that is my username, isn’t it?”
She can’t help but smile a little bit, a small fraction of her nervousness breaking off as she processes his reaction to that. Well, at least he knows how ridiculous it sounds. “You sound like you forgot.”
“More like I’m desensitized to seeing it. Hearing it is a whole different demon, apparently.”
Vex tries and fails to suppress a little laugh. “If you don’t like it, why chose it as your username?”
“I didn’t!” he shoots back, sounding almost offended. “I chose BADNEWS when I made the account. My little sister thought it would be funny to change it.”
“And that was your one allowed name change,” she realizes with a faint grin.
“Yes,” he says, clearly still bitter about the whole thing.
Ah, siblings.
“Really though, you got a name? I don’t want to, but I will resort to using your current username if I have to.”
“Please never say it out loud again.”
She rolls her eyes and can’t help but mouth it slowly to herself, silently so he won’t know, before she continues, “A name then. Doesn’t even need to be your real name, just something to call you.”
“Percival,” he says finally, and she can’t help but roll her eyes again because with a frilly accent like his of course his name would be something like Percival. “Percy’s fine though.”
“Percy,” she repeats, testing the name in her mouth.
“What about you?”
“Vex.”
“Is that a nickname?”
“It’s short for Vex’ahlia.”
“That’s an unusual name.”
She rolls her eyes again. “And Percival is incredibly posh sounding.”
“Fair,” he concedes, and she can’t help but smirk a little bit.
It turns out her sniping buddy-- Percy, she repeats the name slowly to herself in her head, turning the weight of it over and over and finding that she rather likes it-- wasn’t wrong about using voice chat, and she finds it easier to push past problems with their soft chatter guiding the two of them through enemy lines. It’s nice not having to pull off to the side and frantically type out the problem she’s seeing, but instead be able to call out what she sees instantly and watch Percy adjust his playstyle to deal with what she just said.
They lose anyways, getting wiped in overtime, but it’s not a complete stomping like the previous games.
(“Dammit,” she hears Percy whisper at one point, then flicks her gaze up to the corner of the screen to the killfeed where it shows that he just… committed suicide?
“What did you just do?” she asks with a quirked eyebrow.
“It, um, appears I accidentally backed up over the side of a cliff because I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
She snorts, finding herself unconsciously doubling back to regroup with him as he respawns. “Wow.”
“Shut up,” is all he says back, but his voice is lighthearted. She laughs.)
They land themselves in another game with a different group this time, finding much better luck in a fresh match, and keep working their way through ties and wins-- and the occasional loss, although nothing quite as awful as their losing streak earlier. At one point in their third game, Percy calls out a flanker coming up behind Vex while she’s healing and, before she can even turn to see what he’s looking at, proceeds to pistol whip the enemy before they can even lay a finger on her.
Eventually the game stops automatically queueing them into matches, and they're booted to the main menu. Vex takes a long breath and leans back in her chair, stretching out her fingers. They’re sore from so much playing, but she’s not all that tired, surprisingly. She hears the faint sound of a bottle crackling on the other side of the line as Percy presumably takes a drink.
“That was fun,” she says softly, reaching up to play with the edge of her braid.
“It was,” he agrees. “So, do you want to try using voice chat again in the future? Like I said, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m perfectly fine with just using text chat.”
She bites her lip before she responds. “I’ve had some bad experiences with voice chat but, uh, this was really nice. So yeah, I’m fine with voice chat.”
“Oh,” he says, sounding a little pleased, almost like he was expecting her to outright reject him.
“You’re good company.”
He laughs at that, and it’s a rather lovely laugh. Low and melodic, and over too quick. “I’m glad. I’d hate to scare off a new friend.” He quickly adds, “I don’t actually know if you’re comfortable with me calling you a friend -”
It’s her turn to laugh now. “Friend is just fine.”
They settle into a companionable silence for a minute, and Vex spares a look at the corner of her screen and does a double take. It’s nearly four again, and Vax’s alarm goes off soon. She genuinely lost track of time playing with him.
“Holy shit, it’s late,” she says, covering her face with her hands. Why does this always happen?
Percy lets out a startled laugh. “I didn’t even notice.”
“God, it’s like four and my brother is going to get up for work soon and I don’t want him finding out I was up this late.” She pinches the bridge of her nose.
“You’re an hour behind me,” he observes quietly, and she sits up in her chair at that.
“It’s nearly five for you?” she asks.
He sounds almost sheepish as he responds. “I don’t exactly have a normal human sleep schedule.”
She laughs again. “Well, I’m not really one to talk, so you won’t find any judgement here.” She hears him snort. “Well, I really should go before the sun starts coming up.”
“Same,” he agrees.
“Good night-- uh, morning?” She squints at her clock.
“Good night,” he decides. “Neither of us have slept yet and it’s still dark, it doesn’t count as morning.”
“Good point,” she says, a small smile pulling at her lips. “Well, good night, Percy.”
“Good night, Vex,” he responds, and really, despite the poshness of it, it really is a lovely voice.
Percy quits out of the game first, and she contemplates just closing the game and shutting her computer off right away. She’s overdue for bed now, but she begrudgingly pulls up her email anyways. Because she’s an adult. And adults check their fucking email, even if it only leads to soul crushing depression.
She deletes some spam that found its way through her automatic filter and makes note of some printable coupons, slumping in her seat with her chin in her hand as she slowly scrolls her way through the barren wasteland of her email. She’s really not sure what she was expecting-- nothing, honestly, she was expecting nothing and she’s still let down-- but her eyes wander over the messages, catching on a single one that--
Holy shit.
She practically leaps out of her chair and runs out of her room and across the hall to her brother’s, throwing open his bedroom door and flinging herself onto his bed. Vax wakes with a jolt, stiffening as he takes in her shaking form crawling ontop of him. His voice is clear and alert when he speaks-- not a hint of the fact that he’d been asleep not a few seconds before-- his tone laced with worry. “Vex’ahlia? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! Nothing’s wrong!” She’s almost yelling now, and he winces at her volume and proximity.
“Then why did you just bust down my door like the apartment’s on fire, Vex? It’s--” He glances at his bedside table and the clock there and groans when he sees the time. “It’s four in the fucking morning, Vex.”
She grabs him by his shirt then (a black T-shirt with the logo of one of those edgy bands he’s so fond of) and yanks him up so his startled and annoyed face is an inch from hers, her voice trembling as she speaks. “I have an interview.”
Vax stills. “What?”
“I got an email back from the place Keyleth suggested I apply to, the dog grooming place,” she continues excitedly.
“Holy shit,” Vax says.
“Holy shit,” Vex agrees, releasing her grip on his shirt so he falls back against his pillows.
He’s barely back against the bed before Vax wraps his arms around her and pulls her down for a hug, holding her tight against him. “I’m happy for you, Stubby.”
“Hey, thanks.” She’s muffled against his chest.
Then he gives her a playful shove and she tumbles backwards off his bed, gracefully catching herself and landing on her feet, nimble as a cat. He’s grinning at her still. “Now get the fuck out of my room and let me sleep.”
Vex sticks her tongue out at him before she leaves, closing his door behind her and then her own as she walks up to her desk and starts shutting her computer down. When she finally crawls into bed, Trinket curled up right against her side, she falls asleep easily for the first time in a month.